People often times carry wallets with them when they engage in their day to day activities. A typical wallet is made of leather or other suitable material, and is generally a foldable structure that readily fits into a pocket or purse. A wallet typically includes a number of pockets, pouches, or the like for storing items such as a driver's license, a social security card, identification cards, credit cards, debit cards, membership cards, commuter passes, access tools, business cards, cash, coupons, event tickets, transportation tickets, frequent customer cards (e.g., a frequent flier card), medical information cards, receipts, photographs, etc.
Wallets are frequently stolen, lost, or misplaced. When any of these events occurs, not only must the wallet itself be replaced, but all of the contents of the wallet must be replaced as well. As anyone who has lost a wallet can testify, replacing the contents of a wallet can be cumbersome and expensive. In addition, if a wallet is stolen or if a lost wallet falls into the wrong hands, the contents of the wallet may be used to engage in unauthorized activities which financially detriment the wallet owner, as well as any banks, credit issuers, and/or other institutions that issued financial media to the wallet owner.
While the wallet owner is generally able to “cancel” financial media in such situations by contacting the respective financial media issuers, often times this is done too late, i.e., after one or more media have been exploited by the unauthorized user. In some cases, the wallet owner may not recall all of the contents of the now stolen wallet, and so may fail to report theft of one or more items. Further, in addition to any cash contained in a lost or stolen wallet, many media issued by non-financial media issuers have a significant cash value, e.g., transportation tickets, event tickets, commuter passes, and the like, and therefore represent an immediate (and often times unrecoverable) financial loss to the wallet owner. Moreover, the misappropriation of media issued by non-financial media issuers that contain personal information, e.g., a drivers license, social security card, identification card, etc., present the opportunity for an unauthorized possessor of a wallet to engage in the practice known as “identity theft,” whereby the possessor may assume the identity of the wallet owner for various fraudulent purposes, e.g., using the assumed identity to obtain and exploit one or more new financial media.
Another device commonly used to engage in or authorize transactions is a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. In an RFID system, an “interrogator” broadcasts a radio frequency (RF) signal which, if received by an RFID tag, causes the RFID tag to return an RF signal to the interrogator that includes information from the tag that may be used to authorize a transaction. Situations in which such tags have been employed include, for example, automated toll booths and gasoline service stations. RFID tags may be made relatively small in size and therefore may be kept virtually anywhere, e.g., on a keychain or clipped to an automobile visor. Unfortunately, while this aspect of these devices make them convenient, it also makes them highly susceptible to loss or theft. Whenever an RFID tag falls into the wrong hands, there is potential for it to be misused for a long period of time before it is discovered to be missing and some action is take to disable the account associated with it so that it can no longer be used to authorize transactions.